We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

You know I was thinking that I wasn’t quite satisfied with Mission Statement so I thought I’d supplement it a bit, with how we got from there to here. It’s a saga, that’s never told too often, how this laughing upright nation of freeman, have fielded forces with, in Frederick Douglass’ words, with the eagle on their button, and the musket on their shoulder, always in defense of Freedom and Liberty.

You see when that Mission Statement was issued, there were troops (militia, really) called the Continental Army bottling up the British in Boston with some artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen in the name of the “Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress” and hauled to Boston with great difficulty. The army could barely move or fight because of the lack of training but they hung in there.

General Gates in the south had a strategy a few years later best described (by Daniel Morgan “The Old Wagoner”. I think) as “we fight, get beat, retreat, and do it again. That pretty much sums up how we held on till the French showed up.

Even then we shouldn’t forget those huts in the snow where the barefoot, starving, freezing army lived at Valley Forge. Nor should we forget that the Continental Army paraded naked through Philadelphia on their way to Yorktown. And we think we have it bad?

But you don’t want to read 4000 words of military history on the 4th of July, after all there’s hot dogs and beer. So here’s a summary from Bill Whittle with a hattip to John Malcolm.

We’ve really come a long way even in the last 70 or so years. I doubt that anybody realizes what our military (descended from that rag-tag bunch) could really do, if we let them fight a war in the fashion of World War II, and I’d bet money I couldn’t afford to lose, that no one would try it a second time.

And note that this is just a publicity film, what else do you suppose could happen.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

That’s not a politician’s promise. That’s the record and promise of the American People.

If you wish us ill, you would be well advised to remember that we are also allied to most of the best warriors in the world, we learned well enough from them to beat them.

But, you know the toughest war we’ve ever been in was the one we fought with ourselves 150 years ago, today marks the beginning of the end of that one too, as Gettysburg ended yesterday and today Vicksburg surrendered.

Eagles are patient birds but, they have a limit, and a very, very long reach.

And so, we will be going to London for the Olympics again this summer (3d time, I believe) the first time, back in 1908 an Irishman was flagbearer at the opening parade and started one of our most cherished traditions.

A Reminder of Our Heritage

“Every man, who parrots the cry of ‘stand by the President’ without adding the proviso ‘so far as he serves the Republic’ takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude.”

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You’re St. Melito of Sardis!

You have a great love of history and liturgy. You’re attached to the traditions of the ancients, yet you recognize that the old world — great as it was — is passing away. You are loyal to the customs of your family, though you do not hesitate to call family members to account for their sins.